The present invention relates to a method to route in a telecommunication system an incoming call to a suitable destination terminal a related method to select the suitable destination terminal, a receiving terminal able to perform the method to route the call defined in, a destination terminal selecting arrangement able to perform the method to select the suitable destination terminal, and a telecommunication system including such a receiving terminal and such a destination terminal selecting arrangement.
Such a method to route an incoming call to a suitable destination terminal and related equipment are already known in the art, e.g. from the U.S. Pat. No. 5,657,382 entitled ‘Telecommunication system having capability of notifying the occurrence of forwarding of an incoming call to a terminal’. Therein, FIG. 1 shows a conventional telecommunication system that has the capability of transferring or forwarding a call from a receiving terminal to a destination terminal. In the known telecommunication system, a central control unit and terminal registration memory in a switching station co-operate to forward a call. The registration memory registers a terminal together with the address or dial number whereon the terminal can be reached and information indicating whether the call transfer service is activated or not for that terminal. If a call is received by a first terminal whose call transfer service is activated, the switching station automatically transfers the call to a second terminal entitled to receive a call sent to the first mentioned terminal. Thus, in the known system, all calls sent to the first terminal are automatically transferred to the second terminal if the call transfer service is activated for these two terminals. In such a system, the destination terminal, i.e. the first terminal in case the call transfer service is not activated or the second terminal in case the call transfer service is activated, may not be the most suitable terminal to handle the call. The destination terminal even may be unable to handle the call. If for example the first terminal is a fixed telephone terminal, the second terminal is a mobile telephone set, and both terminals have their call forwarding service activated, a fax call received by the fixed terminal will be transferred automatically to the mobile terminal which is unable to handle this call so that the call will be left unanswered.